In the ultimate Friday night news dump, US Attorney for the District of Washington DC Jeanine Pirro filed a truly startling motion to dismiss in the federal government’s case against David Hearn, the former Olympian canoeist who became the avatar for the comically unjust prosecution of people rolled up in the attempt to make Trump’s reflecting pool fantasies a reality.
It’s a remarkable document, an attempt to save some sort of face before the DC Superior Court by throwing the Department of the Interior totally under the bus, backing up the bus, and then running it over again.
Pirro clearly wanted to spare herself and her office any further scrutiny by the courts, but this is comically inept, an attempt to paper over the fact that her office charged Hearn and several others based only on the fevered imaginings of President Trump, who declared that antifa wrecked his pool rather than face the fact that his own handpicked contractor screwed everything up. But all the filing really does is highlight how much she was willing to lie in the first place.
When Pirro somehow managed to get a DC grand jury to indict Hearn on felony charges of damaging the reflecting pool, her July 2 press conference announcing the charges wasn’t light on detail, and that might have been one of the things that doomed this misbegotten prosecution.
Aaron Rupar @atrupar.com
this Pirro press conference is completely beyond parody, like a deleted scene from Idiocracy. listen to this shit
According to Pirro, a National Park Service employee saw Hearn “forcefully and violently pulling up and removing the bottom liner with both hands.” He also rudely shouted at an NPS employee who told him to stop, so committed was this 67-year-old man to his felonious behavior. She vowed they would be able to prove he did more than $1,000 in damage and howled that her office “will not allow our sacred monuments to be roped off, or diminished, or in any way impacted by disgruntled individuals who think that they and not the rest of the nation have the right to decide what should happen.”
That certainly makes it sound like Pirro’s office had investigated the matter and talked to witnesses before bringing charges, doesn’t it?
And what of the Department of the Interior and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum? What did Burgum have to say when this was all unfolding?
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